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Stop the harassment, intimidation, lies, trumped-up false charges, arrests, and even murder of citizens who support Defend the Forest and Stop Cop City.
Now, the GBI and Atlanta police have arrested three organizers of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, a seven-year-old, non-profit Atlanta fund that provides bail and legal support for arrested protesters.
Organizers of the fund, Marlon Kautz, Adele Maclean, and Savannah Patterson, were accused of cooked-up ridiculous charges of money laundering and charity fraud with very weak to no real evidence. Adele has been feeding the hungry and homeless for twenty years or longer. Marlon is part of Cop Watch; both are well-known and respected activists in Atlanta.
This is not the first time police have arrested people and lied about their charges. Activists have said for two years that Cop City will set up a private militarized police state to destroy social justice movements. So far, police actions have not disproved this belief.
“Bailing out protestors exercising their constitutionally protected rights is not a crime. It is a historical tradition in Atlanta….the civil rights activists in the ’60s were bailed out,” Lauren Regan, Executive Director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center, said at a press conference in front of the DeKalb County Jail.
“Bail funds have been around since the 1920s. Dr. King was bailed out of jail when he was arrested in southern cities. Bail funds are part of the organizational structure of movements, and there is nothing nefarious or criminal about them. Only now has the state, city, and country tried to criminalize cop city protesters in an attempt to criminalize the movement,” Kamau Franklin with Community Movement Builders said at the press conference with over one hundred supporters.
The Atlanta Police Foundation (APF), composed of some of Atlanta’s wealthiest and biggest corporations, wants a Public Safety Training Center. However, the citizens of Fulton and DeKalb counties do not want a militarized police force controlled by APF.
The Atlanta Police Foundation is in a land, and money grab for the old Prison Farm’s 300-plus acres in southeast Atlanta to build the largest militarized police force in the country. In contrast, citizens want green spaces and trees to protect against climate change, no more police violence against people of color, or environmental racism in a predominantly black neighborhood.
APF lied about what it would cost taxpayers to build Cop City. First, it was $30 million, then the Atlanta Community Press Collective, through open records, discovered it was $60 million, and with the second phase of construction, more like $85 million. Who knows what the final cost will be?
A Community Stakeholder Advisory Committee was set up. Lily Ponitz, a Georgia Tech engineer, was appointed to that committee. But Ponitz proved to be too honest and told the truth about pollution and other problems in the area, so they forced her off the committee.
APF, police, and politicians spread the word that anyone who supports Stop Cop City and camps in the public park next to the old Prison Farm property was a domestic terrorist and an outside agitator.
Multiple police agencies raided Intrenchment Creek Park to remove everyone from camping in the public park. They came in one morning like an army going to war. People fled in fear, and the police ripped up tents left behind. When Manuel “Tortuguita” Teran would not come out of the tent, they shot pepper balls into the tent and then shot Tortuguita 57 times while sitting down with hands up. They accused Teran of shooting first, but that has never been proven.
Teran was the first environmental activist to be killed in the United States.
Over several months 42 young people were arrested and charged with concocted domestic terrorism charges and received huge unrealistic bonds. The average bond was around $20 thousand dollars, some more and some less.
Mayor Andre Dickens’s office released “Key Facts on the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center.” Alex Ip, a Georgia Tech environmental engineer, fact-checked the city’s claims on Cop City and found most to be false or mostly false. Georgia Tech took down his post for being a truthteller. https://www.thexylom.com/post/fact-checking-the-city-of-atlanta-s-claims-on-cop-city
On May 15, 300 people, most from Fulton and DeKalb counties, attended the Atlanta City Council meeting and spoke out against Cop City putting an end to the cops outside agitator lie. Not one person spoke for Cop City.
It is time for everyone who supports democracy, Defend the Forest, and Stop Cop City to attend the next Atlanta City Council meeting on Monday, June 5. Tell ACC we need communities funded, not more jails, guns, and cops.
We need politicians to stop flooding the streets with guns of war like the AR-15s that are creating all the mass shootings and crime in the nation. We need police reform and accountability. We need funds for community needs, not more jails, cops, and guns. We need to reduce the carbon in the atmosphere, not cut down forests.
written and photo by Gloria Tatum
Streets of Atlanta 